The Broad Brush: Your Alameda News in 60 Seconds

The City Council will be considering a pair of key decisions Tuesday with implications for the both the near-term and farther-flung future of Alameda Point. The council will consider whether to hire a new company to manage and lease all of the city’s property – including Alameda Point – and also, whether to approve a proposed list of evaluation criteria for assessing development proposals for the former Navy base.

A pair of community groups is looking into its options for stopping a proposed home development on land the local park district had sought for expansion of Crab Cove – including a potential ballot measure that would rezone the land for park use. Friends of Crown Beach and the Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club have formed an exploratory committee to consider ways to halt a proposal to develop 48 homes on four acres of government property on McKay Avenue, across from Crab Cove, which the East Bay Regional Park District had hoped to acquire for an expansion.

Beth Murray has lived and worked on the island of Alameda for most of the last decade. Kristen Hanlon caught up with the poet and homeopath upon the publication of her new book, The Island.

The Perforce Foundation has organized an event to benefit two East Bay charities, the Alameda Point Collaborative and the East Oakland Boxing Association. The theme for the evening is, “Bring the whole family, wear your pajamas, and support a very good cause.”

School districts across the nation are implementing new Common Core State Standards intended to bring schools’ college and career readiness efforts into the 21st century, and exercises like the one teacher Andy Lee conducted at Franklin Elementary School recently offer a glimpse of what parents and students can expect to see more of when the effort is fully rolled out next year.

“It’s always great when Tim brings a new project to fill the chambers,” City Planner Andrew Thomas joked Monday of C. Timothy Hoppen, president of Harbor Bay Isle Associates. But when all was said and done, only a dozen people got up to speak on the developer’s plan to build 80 luxury homes where the Harbor Bay Club now sits and to build a new, 40,000 square foot club on North Loop Road, in the Harbor Bay Business Park.

A former Alameda fire chief owes the city more than a quarter million dollars in legal costs after agreeing to drop the last standing claim in a lawsuit claiming he had been wrongly fired. An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled on Thursday that former chief David Kapler would be required to pay the city $260,535.39 in attorney’s fees and costs, nearly two weeks after his attorney filed paperwork dropping the two-year-old lawsuit.

Alameda’s schools leaders are facing a fresh teacher contract issue this fall: Whether to approve a fresh raise for teachers that would take effect next July – or face the possibility that the contract could end up back in the hands of a mediator. If a new deal isn’t reached by February 15, 2014, both sides will declare an impasse, sending the dispute into the hands of a state mediator.